Eon's Pass
by Bundlejumper
Summary: Short Story about a Frame Operators first Encounter with the Stalker. First Fic i have ever written. I have taken some freedom with the Warframe world and changed how some things work.


Eon's Pass

A Warframe... once a tool for peace, now a weapon of destruction.

**- Tenno outpost, Classified Location -**

My name is Aikon, I'm a Warframe operator. As of the latest mission performed by a cell, I am now the oldest living Warframe user, since Tirth, the oldest living Rhino and Warframe user died on a Grineer raid.  
I have been told that he died bravely, that he died fighting the Stalker alone, so that the rest of his cell could escape.

The Stalker… no one knows who he is, or why he is hunting us, the others have their own theory, that he is some Tenno gone rogue, but I'm not so sure.

In all the years if been operating my Loki frame, I have never once heard of a Tenno that went Rogue. I tried asking Tirth one time, he simply responded with a grunt and a "No one is that stupid", he probably said that because, going rogue will get you the entire force of the Tenno brought down upon you.

I have heard ghost stories about Tenno that have gone rogue, only to be hunted down by every available cell currently operating. The thought alone is horrifying, I've seen what a single cell of veteran operators can do, and I'd hate to think about what a full battalion could do.

But none the less, Lotus still has us looking out for this Stalker, hoping that one day a cell will get lucky and kill him. So far no one has managed that, a few have fought him off, but never without losing someone from their cell. Personally I have only had one encounter with the Stalker. To this day that one mission still causes me to wake up drenched in cold sweat, looking around franticly in fear of him hiding in the darkness.

**- 23 Years earlier -**

The mission was simple enough, get in, take down the reactor and get the hell out. Originally I was supposed to go alone, since I have better experience with working alone, but the Lotus insisted that I brought Tiqa, a Saryn Operator, Tefron "Cryo" a Frost Operator, and lastly Mino a Nyx Operator who recently passed her trials. Lotus wanted Mino to get some experience with veteran Operators; she apparently showed great promise during her training.

While preparing for the mission, I decided to take a look at what my cell decided to use as weapons this time around.

Tiqa was no surprise really, she always preferred her Gorgon/Twin Vipers/Bo combo, don't ask me how she carries that Gorgon around, to me Tiqa always seem like one of the weaker Tenno, but she constantly proves me wrong on missions, by hauling that Gorgon around with her. She is not half bad with that Bo staff either, but she rarely uses it, nothing ever really gets close enough to her for her to have to use it.

Cryo was a typical Frost Operator, he heavily outfitted his frame with lots of Mods that made his abilities do more damage, take less energy, and go further. Weapons were really more of a second choice for him, so he carries around a Boltor, a Vasto and a Scindo Axe. He uses all three with equal skill, but will only draw one of them if he doesn't have enough energy left to use his abilities, or there is no energy in range for him to keep using his abilities.

Mino she really haven't had the time to craft any better weapons. So she still run around with the standard issue Braton and a Lato, she did manage to craft a Cronus after getting the schematic, but that is as far as her gear extends, hell she doesn't even have enough experience with her frame to use her Absorb ability.

Myself, I have used the same setup for nearly a hundred years now. A Paris Prime that I acquired on one of my trips to the void with Tirth, a set of Kunai that I grew fond of after trying them for the first time, and lastly I carry a Glaive for long range corner takedowns. A setup that works perfectly with my Warframe's ability to turn invisible, it was designed to work alone, but not with a cell at my back.

After checking over the gear I headed for my ship. The old girl has served me faithfully for many years, and will continue to do so for a long time. When I arrived at the docks, I saw Mino standing there, all packed and ready to go, she seemed overly eager at the time, but who could blame her? Your first official mission, and to top it off you are sent with three of the best Tenno alive. I chose not to say more than what I need to say to her, merely the order to get in her ship and await the launch order. Shortly after she entered her ship Cryo and Tiqa arrived. It didn't take Tiqa two seconds to get something about the mission wrong.

"Hey Aikon! You ready to go kill some of those Corpus idiots?!" she yelled it at a rather high pitch, poor Cryo he was right next her, the man is probably deaf on that ear for the rest of the mission.

"Tiqa, we are boarding a Grineer ship" was all Cryo replied.

Tiqa hung her head in defeat, she never did remember what sort of ship we were boarding, that one lead to an interesting encounter with a infested crawler shortly after she boarded the ship, but that is another story. The two boarded their ships and I my own.

We boarded the Grineer ship without getting discovered, so far so good.

"Okay remember, we are here only to take out the reactor and get out, no going off course and exploring the ship, the Grineer on this ship are not recruits, many of them have seen battle, and we don't want Mino here to get too badly hurt on her first Mission" I spoke the words with a monotone voice, as if I had given the exact same speech a million times, and I had.

We started our way through the ship, and as I expected at the first sight of Grineer Cryo went completely insane, he flew in the room and didn't waste a second activating his Avalanche ability. The entire room froze over and no Grineer was left when he was done. As effective as it was, it did alert the Grineer to our presence on their ship.

The following rooms I chose to scout out on my own, and would then determine whatever Mino could take out the room on her own or not. Most of the rooms we came to were not heavily guarded, so I assumed it was because they were already going towards the reactor to set up defenses. Mino did really well; she cleared the rooms with great skill, utilizing her ability to control the mind of a Grineer to turn on his allies.

We had just cleared another room when I could have sworn I saw a flicker on my HUD, usually I wouldn't suspect a single little flicker, our frames get quite the workout so the HUD often shakes from time to time, but this time it didn't shake like usual, this horrible reddish hue appeared and I got a chill down my spine.

"Did anybody else get a small flicker in their HUD just now?" Tiqa asked the rest of us. Fearing someone might be listening in I simply nodded, catching my drift Cryo and Mino simply nodded as well. We kept going but kept our wits about us, fearing that something might have disruption capabilities, which usually means we have to rely on raw memory for our energy meter, this isn't an issue for veteran Operators, but for someone new like Mino it could be lethal.

We reached the reactor core without much further trouble. Despite my initial thoughts, the Grineer had not moved back and fortified the reactor, they simply weren't on the ship, on route to the reactor we went through the hangar, and we saw that the majority of the ships fighters were away. We destroyed the reactor and started making our way to extraction. Then it happened again the strange flicker, only this time it was more violent and a dark voice accompanied it "Tenno! You will pay for your crimes!"

Immediately we surrounded Mino, fearing that whatever made our HUDs flicker would be too much for a rookie. After a few minutes of standing in formation, we decided to move on, no flicker had occurred nor had there been any more noise from the strange voice.

We reached a large open hall, it was an intersection in the ship, and from here you could get to any other part of the ship. The only problem was that when we entered, there in the middle of the dark ship, a Warframe was sitting idle.

The Warframe that we saw sitting there was not a model any of us knew, it was black with red trim and lights, and I could've sworn that there were coming smoke from the Warframe as well.

The frame stood up, and simply said "You will now be sentenced for your crimes!" crimes? What crimes have we committed? Is he referring to the Grineer?

"What do you mean with crimes? We haven't done anything!" Tiqa yelled, I could understand the rage in her voice, many of the Tenno are proud warriors, that hold their code of honor I high esteem, so getting accused of committing a crime is a great blow to that honor, not many Tenno will take that sitting down.

"The sentence has been decided. You are hereby sentenced to Death!" that was all Cryo needed to hear, he instantly summoned a snow globe around us, fearing that we would get shot at, he was right. Though it wasn't bullets that were flying our way, it was arrows. As each arrow impacted with the snow globe, I noticed the arrows themselves were of different make, neither a type nor shape I knew of, not even the ammo I use for my Paris Prime looks anything like that, so the mysterious Operator was using a custom made bow and arrows.

My line of thought was broken when we all head a scream from behind us. When we turned around we only managed to glimpse what happened, it took less than a second before Mino was grabbed by a the mysterious Operator and pulled out of the snow globe, "Dammit! MINO!" Cryo ran like mad out of his globe, hell bent on getting our recruit back, I chose not to follow. I was scared. For the first time in my life as an Operator I was truly scared. We were facing an Operator with an unknown frame and weapons design. Tiqa and I stood in silence, waiting. We didn't hear anything not Cryo firing of any abilities, no weapons clashing no nothing.

I Drew my Paris and knocked an arrow. I aimed out in the darkness, waiting for a sound or shimmer to reveal our mysterious friend. But still nothing, I looked over at Tiqa, I could see she was scared as well, some of her poison was coated around her Bo staff, she was obviously expecting to get grabbed same as Mino. But this time the mysterious Operator didn't try to sneak up on us, no he simply walked in through the snow globe with two frames, one in each arm.

He threw the beheaded corpses of Mino and Cryo on the ground, looking between us and them, like he was merely showing us that there was no use in fighting. I didn't think before I acted, I merely released the knocked arrow and let it fly.

_I didn't believe what I saw at the time, the mysterious Operator simply let the arrow Impact with his shields, and chuckled as they recharged seconds later. _

Tiqa went nuts upon seeing Mino and Cryo's dismembered corpses, I don't know if she knew what she did, but she unleashed the most powerful Miasma ability I have seen to date. It easily coated the entire hall we were in with her poison.

When the thick poison clouds disappeared, we both thought we would see three corpses now, our two companions, and the mysterious Operator. But we only saw two corpses, our friends. The mysterious Operator had disappeared again, this time though I was content on catching him, I activated my invisibility and pulled out my glaive, I waited for a sound and not a second later did I hear it, I heard a silent tap on the ground from someone landing. I threw my glaive fast and strong, praying that it would impact with its target, and hopefully take down his shields and hurt him even a little. But no such luck, all I heard was my glaive stopping in flight, followed by the words "Your weapons and Tenno Powers are useless!"

I looked over to Tiqa, planning to tell her to run like the wind, and that I would keep our mysterious Operator busy so she could escape. But as I turned my head, I was met with Tiqa bent over on the floor, with an arrow through her shoulders. She screamed in pain and tried to stand up, but as she did, a blade ran through her chest, and pierced her heart.

When he withdrew his weapon, I saw it was a scythe; I was stunned, I had never seen a scythe outside of the Void before, I had always hoped to find the schematic for it somewhere inside the void, but never had the luck. But his didn't look like the ones I had seen, his looked corrupted, torn, evil.

In realizing that my comrades were dead, and that I was probably going to die as well, I ran over to Cryo's body and grabbed his Scindo, if I was going down; I was sure as hell going to give this bastard the time of his life while falling.

I charged him blindly, with a broad swing I hoped to impact his arm, stopping him from using his scythe again, but as I ran towards him, I noticed him pull something out from his leg holders, and whatever he threw at me, it was going fast, and when it struck my shields, it ate through a big part of it like it was a buffet. I stopped instantly hoping to avoid any further of whatever he was throwing at me.

But when I stopped, he charged drawing out his scythe; he came at me with speed I didn't expect from someone carrying a heavy weapon as the scythe. I barely managed to block the strike with the Scindo, but I didn't have time to prepare a counter attack before the next attack impacted with the Scindo.

Under his relentless assault I tried to come up with a counter measure, but I couldn't think of anything, I had drained too much energy staying invisible for such a big part of the mission, so using the Decoy for a surprise attack was out of the question.

In a moment of desperation, in between his blows I withdrew an arrow from my quiver, hoping that I had drawn the right one, I thrust it in front of my, impacting with his shield, and by the luck of the universe my arrow exploded as I had hoped. The blast sends us both flying apart, when I landed, I instantly got to my feet and started throwing kunai at the mysterious Operator, he dodged most of them, but some impacted and I could see from them actually hitting his frame, that his shield had been taken down by my explosive arrow, just like my own did.

I kept up the assault of kunai, but eventually I had to reload my holders, and in that split second, he reacted by withdrawing back into the darkness of the ships corners. I looked around franticly in fear, praying that he wouldn't get the drop on me, and then get my head taken off.

Seeing no other option I ran. I ran as fast as my frame would allow it. I ran through the hallways of the ship, taking notice of all the dead Grineer on the way, there were many more then I had first perceived, did this mysterious stranger really thing that taking out the Grineer was a crime? I didn't bother to stop and think about it I merely kept running. I reached the last set of corridors before the extraction point; I gave it all I could to get away.

But as I opened the final door and I could see the extraction pods there waiting for me, I also saw the horrible red trim and that terrible smoke out of the corner of my eye. Had I reacted half a second slower I would probably have a hole in my head the size of an arrow right now, but I managed to dodge it by a hair's length. I drew my own Paris bow once more, knocked what could very well be the last arrow I would ever fire in my life, I aimed in the direction of the other arrow and let it fly.

I knew I lucked out when I heard a muffled thud, and as I reached my pod and almost jumped in, I head a faint voice yell out behind me "We are not done Tenno! I will find you! You will be called to answer for your crimes!" I chose to ignore the words, fearing that there might be any truth to them, I hurried to my ship, and flew back to the outpost.

As I arrived I was immediately met by medics, and some of the other Tenno. I was bombed with questions, all about my companions, what had happened, and why we went into radio silence without any warning to Lotus. I didn't answer most of them, I only told what happened once to another Tenno, and that was Tirth at the time. He padded me gently on the shoulder and let out a sigh "Don't beat yourself up over this Aikon, the Stalker has taken out many of us, and we still don't have a way to fight him. So getting out alive after an encounter with that guy, hell even planting an arrow somewhere on that bastard? I would say you were blessed, but having met the stalker once before myself, I'd say cursed is more fitting" And he was right.

**- Present Time -**

Since that day I've been training all I could. Next time I faced that bastard I was going to be ready for him. This time I would kill him. This time I would get Revenge for all the other Tenno he has killed. This time he was going to feel fear.

**- 5 Years later. Corpus Ship, Europa -**

A familiar flicker appeared on my HUD along with a small smile on my face "Time to finish this you Bastard"


End file.
